A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is a journalist or commentator, or more general speaking, an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, location. A foreign correspondent is stationed in a foreign country. The term correspondent refers to the original practice of filing news reports via postal letter. The largest networks of correspondents belong to ARD (Germany) and BBC (UK).
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A correspondent generally includes some of his/her own perspective on the news. For example, a correspondent is expected to provide considerable context to the events being chronicled. A reporter, on the other hand, offers largely fact-based reporting.
In Britain the term 'correspondent' usually refers to someone with a specific specialist area, such as health correspondent. A 'reporter' is usually someone without such expertise who is allocated stories by the newsdesk on any story in the news.
A war correspondent covers stories first-hand from a war zone. It is perhaps the most dangerous form of journalism.
A foreign bureau is a news bureau set up to support a news gathering operation in a foreign country.
In TV news, a "live on-the-scene" reporter reports from the field during a "live shot". This has become an extremely popular format with the advent of Eyewitness News.
A recent cost-saving measure is for local TV news to dispense with out-of-town reporters and replace them with syndicated correspondents, usually supplied by a centralized news reporting agency. The producers of the show schedule time with the correspondent, who then appears "live" to file a report and chat with the hosts. The reporter will go and do a number of similar reports for other stations. Many viewers may be unaware that the reporter does not work directly for the news show.[1] This is also a popular way to report the weather. For example, AccuWeather doesn't just supply data, they also supply on-air meteorologists from television studios at their headquarters. [2][3]
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